Le Wagon

After 9 weeks of intensive Coding at LeWagon Lisbon where HTML, CSS, Ruby, Rails, Postgres SQL and JS ruled our days and nights, it is time to reflect on these hours of concentration, days of smiles, and million of seconds of pure pleasure.

From finance …

After a very traditional early career start in finance in Geneva, Switzerland, I had been attracted to the world of Fintech for a while. In the past year, I have been working on new web trends with the wild ambition of leading my current company, a Fintech dating back to 2000s, towards new more modern, 3.0 solutions :) After weeks and months exploring the tech world and its opportunities, my frustration became too big. I told myself how can you be truly effective in Fintech without knowing how to code? It would be a bit like learning how to ski with a sledge. It won’t slide for long.

To coding….

I did some research, and came across Le Wagon. After reading some reviews and working through Codecademy, my tickets were booked for Lisbon. 

To be very honest, the first month was really difficult, very challenging. Yet after that, everything started to fall into place. You begin to understand the pieces of this huge puzzle. I cannot tell you the pleasure of seeing your code running for the first time!!! 

Indeed, I found the content of the course to be of a very high level, it was very demanding but the results were incredible. You really learn the bases of Full stack web development in 9 weeks, and more importantly you learn the mindset of “how to learn quickly and effectively.” 

After Ruby, SQL, HTML, JS, and getting to know my new friends -  Bootstrap and Rails -  we kicked off with the 3-weeks of project work. Project week Airbnb was great, because you learn to work quickly and ro develop the application using the open source model and the millions of available gems. Then finally comes the final project. My project was fortunate enough to have been selected by my classmates. In two weeks, we created a game for couples to help them maintain the fun and romance in their love life. Lovee will soon be online if you are looking for ideas for your prince charming or your princess

Why Lisbon? Simple - the surf and its booming Fintech environment. 

Back to Fintech 

I can say with sincerity that Le Wagon can help you achieve your goals of becoming a Tech Entrepreneur. I'm leaving in a few days to return to Lisbon for 10 days of intense coding in order to create our first Fintech prototype, a personal assistant for your investments. On the schedule: APIs, JavaScript, AJAX ... which would have not been feasible without Le Wagon.

Thanks Le Wagon Lisbon

Before Le Wagon I was trying to learn programming on my own.   For me, code is one of the few things that gives that amazing ability to create whatever you want -  you just need a computer and an internet connection to start.  With that said, it’s not an easy task, it takes resilience and a lot of patience. 

I have an engineering background and I can tell you that I learned so much. The teaching method is really well structured. You walk away with a very robust set of skills that you know how to improve upon after the bootcamp, and that’s really what you hope for in a two month course like this. The teachers are experts are extremely competent and know the material from front to back.  And after staying with the same people everyday for 2 months it’s impossible to not make very good friends that as an upside share the same passion as you.

Our final project was an online payment solution for freelancers.  It basically secured a clients payment and released it when the job was done. It was unthinkable for me before Le Wagon that you could build an MVP from scratch, like that, in just two weeks.

Since the bootcamp, I have stayed in touch with the majority of my classmates and ended up joining another project with 5 other alumni from my batch. This time it’s a combination of web development and energy production. We are being accelerated by the major energy company in Portugal (EDP). It is amazing what you can do with people that share your passion and have the same interests.

For me, Le Wagon turned out to be the best investment.  After just a few months out, it already created many opportunities.  I highly recommend it.

Good luck!

While most people dream of becoming a doctor, a policeman or a lawyer, when they are younger, I was dreaming of being part of a Startup. When I started studying in business school, I spent hours per week reading all sorts of books, articles, blogs and online courses to acquire a tech culture. I wanted to be able to understand the whys and wherefores

of this environment. After one year I had studied the upper layer, I had a strong feeling that something was missing. Indeed, in order to fully understand this environment, I needed to study the technical layer. Therefore, as usual, I naively began on my own by consulting articles to solve the mystery of startup’s products! I decided to browse resumes of emblematic characters of the Tech industry. I came to the conclusion that a significant portion of them have in their backgrounds technical skills.

Since I have a curious mind and I am always eager to learn, I enrolled during my summer vacation @LeWagon Coding Bootcamp. I graduated from Le Wagon one month ago, and it was the best jump forward I have ever done, certainly the most valuable decision for a business student who is passionate about Tech. My expectations were high concerning the Full stack Program. With very ambitious goals when it came to my skills before Le Wagon, and I have not been disappointed even more.

A CHALLENGING WORK ENVIRONMENT

'Le Wagon full stack program for entrepreneurs’ is a 9 intensive weeks program. The goal is to build an MVP during the last two weeks. But if you expect knowledge and techniques to be brought to you on a silver plate like the way thing are taught at school, you are delusional; coding is about learning how to learn. Le Wagon’s team do it with faultless functioning. They designed a program in a way to make learning more attractive and straightforward, both within their platform and the day to day courses. The range of resources and tools built in-house fit our needs and are always up to date.

The hard skills you learn are relevant and straightforward. You learn the core concepts of the web development with an approach that tends to reach an operational autonomy. You will be able to deal with API, frameworks, database, collaboration tool like Github and many other.

The learning speed is high and the time flies out when you are in front of your computer 10 hours per day, it can be disconcerting at first. For my part it was, but you become right away addict. The funny thing is that the staff can be disconcerting too regarding their full beliefs and trust in the program. Their faith in your success comes from the program itself. I was skeptical, but it is only at the end of your 9 weeks that you can realize that they were right.

A GAME CHANGER EXPERIENCE

First of all, I think that one of the main strengths of Le Wagon is stakeholders who gravitate around them and their network in the Parisian startup ecosystem. Most of the people I met share a positive mindset, a sharing spirit with a contagious motivation. The mix of ages, backgrounds, and meetups allow a real exchange between people. As a young man, I learned every day from the sharing spirit of my buddies, teachers and persons who are in the co-working space. The apprenticeship is not limited to learning technical skills with best practices because learning how to code is about developing your developer mindset. It is through this mindset that you reach a real operational autonomy. An important part of the pedagogy is learning how to search for the correct info, methods, techniques, services. This is a key to understand better coding culture and be able to make progress. Now when an idea comes through my mind or when I scroll the web, I immediately try to think in terms of components and technical issues, which makes me more pertinent and pragmatic. I discover a product driven way of thinking and tackling web products.

Although Le Wagon paves me the way for further areas of work, all the information you learn during the Bootcamp can be reviewed, improved. For that reason, the master word is practice. So actually I try to improve what I have learned on a freelance project. Once again when you are stuck, you can count on Le Wagon community. The community is very active, alumnus, teachers constantly pull together to deal with code issues or to share quality information and resources. When I read the Slack of the community, I always feel the urge to go broad and develop my skills; there is a spreading emulation.

In a word Le Wagon afford me an overall framework regarding web products analysis and workflow. My lack of tech skills is not a barrier anymore; it became a strength. I know that there is now a before and an after Bootcamp, nothing will ever be the same again. 

I was Marketing Manager in a tech startup during 4 years. Every day, I was working with developers but I could not understand what they were really doing. This was frustrating… But unfortunately I had no time to learn to code. It turns out that I quit my job in Paris to move to HK. This was the perfect time to attend Le Wagon!

This experience gave me plenty of energy. It was stimulating. Really. You meet new passionate and creative people. It changes from your high-school friends you see every week :wink: Le Wagon widens your scope, give you desire to undertake great projects. For me, it was the perfect "break" between 2 jobs.

Today, I have much more confidence when applying for tech companies. I can now get Product Manager position, which was really hard without any tech background. I strongly recommend Le Wagon, whether you want to find a dev position or aspiring to a new job in the tech industry.

I finished Le Wagon's 9-week intensive program in Paris in September 2016. My background had literally nothing to do with coding -- I studied Music and Psychology at university, and went to on to get a TEFL certificate and teach English as a Second Language. After 3-4 years of teaching, I knew I wanted a change of pace, but wasn't sure exactly what that might be. I wasn't prepared to go back to university for a 2-year Masters degree in Psychology or anything else; I had enjoyed the flexibility I got from teaching English and didn't want to give that up. My husband was/is a passionate developer who works at home, so I decided to see what programming was all about. I spent the better part of a year trying to teach myself to code with some great online resources, and really enjoyed it. Although I learned a lot, working full-time and a lack of structure/progression to my studies prevented me from making the progress I was hoping to see. 

That's when I decided to give up my job and enroll in a full-time programming bootcamp. I had heard great things and read great reviews online about Le Wagon before attending, and I wasn't disappointed with my experience. 

Le Wagon creates an amazing atmosphere from Day 1. You really feel like you've become part of a special community of people - people who are fun, smart, driven, and creative. Many people who attend Le Wagon are hopeful start-up CEOs (and some already successful!), who want to understand code just enough to get an idea off the ground and someday manage a development team; my goal was more straightforward. I just wanted to learn how to code and become a developer myself.

The curriculum at Le Wagon is really first class. They have found a way to teach you all of the important practical skills you'll need to make a web application, while cutting out unnecessary/theoretical computer science concepts. The idea is to get you up to speed and capable of creating an MVP version of an application and/or an employable junior Ruby developer as quickly as possible. And they certainly succeed in doing that.

The teachers at Le Wagon are extremely knowledgeable, passionate, and approachable. Although it is an intense program, it is very manageable with the support of both the teachers and the teacher assistants. The structure of each day also makes it manageable: morning lecture -- pair programming (with a classmate and the support of teachers and TAs) -- lunch break -- more pair programming -- 'live code' (where the class comes together again to work through some challenges together). The days are long (9am - 7pm) but really fly by! 

Another huge bonus is the online access to courses and exercises. Although in theory you don't need to spend any time outside of class doing homework or preparing for the next day, if you ever feel like you need some extra practice, all of the lectures (video recordings from previous groups) and exercises are available through the online platform. I found it particularly helpful to watch the video lecture the night before so that the material wasn't 100% new the next morning. Some of the concepts took a while to understand, so experiencing the lecture twice was so helpful. 

All in all, I consider Le Wagon a very polished bootcamp. They've had quite a number of 'batches' (as they call them), and the program is refined after each group. The people running the program are warm, friendly, professional individuals, who will help you to achieve your goal, whatever it may be. 

I highly recommend this program to anyone thinking about doing a bootcamp. I was very happy with my experience at Le Wagon!

My name is Oscar and I finished Le Wagon a few weeks ago in Paris. It was a true life changer.

Just to give you a bit of background, I worked 4 years in the oil & gas exploration industry, as a strategy consultant. Basically, I was advising CEOs on their exploration strategy.

I decided to quit my job and start my own company, a web application to help influencers monetize their communities. After a few weeks in the process, I found out that knowledge in web development would be essential in the success of my company. Friends and relatives told me about Le Wagon and I decided to apply. I wanted to be able to code beta versions or MVPs, work efficiently with developers and understand the full landscape of web development.

Le Wagon gave me all those abilities in 9 weeks. The program is quite intense and you learn fast. After a few weeks, you start to understand the big picture as well as being able to code a web app using Ruby on Rails. The last weeks of the program are super efficient as you are working in teams to ship out a high quality project!

I am now working on the beta version of my website (check it out on www.aulo.io) and launching the business very soon!

I gained critical knowledge thanks to Le Wagon and I am now fully prepared to launch my web application business!

Why I joined Le Wagon?

3 years ago I discovered the startup world. Since then, I have worked in the 3D printing industry in Cambodia, I have organized two startup contests, and I have been absorbed by the startup universe. But I didn’t feel I would be able to set up my own startup. Something was missing. I had a lot of ideas, but I had trouble knowing if they were technically feasible, finding a developer to work with. In fact I always had a good reason not to launch one.
One day, a friend of mine talked about Le Wagon, a bootcamp for entrepreneurs to become a smart coder. It sounded great. After that, for sure I would be able to turn ideas into business. So I decided to take the best decision of my life.

9 weeks of pure happiness

So I joined Le Wagon Paris this summer for a 9-week intensive coding bootcamp. It was cool, very cool. Every day in a very nice atmosphere you learn something new, you discover new people and you become better. The best is that after only 3 weeks you are able to create concrete things like a race game or a static website. It is really intensive so you need to be in tip top shape and focus on your 9 weeks but this is worth it. Teachers are amazing, lessons and exercises are amazing, people who are programming around you are amazing. To be honest I won’t be able to criticize someting at Le Wagon.

Now what? The best is after!

Since the end of the bootcamp, I code everyday. It's like a drug, I can’t stop myself. I have started learning how to create android app, google extension, and launched a startup with 3 others Le Wagon bootcampers. My roomate becomes crazy because I am always coding. I have the feeling that now everything is possible. Any idea could be a startup, a concrete project. My dream is to take a gap year to travel all around the world. Now this is possible, I can do that and make money by coding, I am free. Imagine, you can work from the beach in Brazil, Thailand or Australia, not so bad, right?

I ended my review here, because it’s time to code!

Thank you Le Wagon.

I was part of the first Le Wagon London cohort, batch #36 summer 2016.

I don't have a computer science degree or computer background. I don't have any formal tech training. I have worked as a freelance graphic designer and run my own business for many years, learning to build websites by working my way through various online courses. So I could handle html, css and a little php. 

Learning online was ok, it helped me discover my inner geek, which now unleashed, has me addicted to coding. But, and this is a big BUT, these courses always left me feeling frustrated. When you work alone you can be left with 101 questions in your head, "Am I doing this right?", "Is there a better way to write this code?", and 3 days of hair pulling staring at the dreaded white screen of death trying to troubleshoot the missing ';' in your code. Yet there is no-one to ask.

Then I had an idea for an app, and together with my two co-founders, we knew we had to find something more. We'd researched the idea, we'd tested the market and we knew we had something, but feedback from potential investors was that they wanted to see a technical lead on the founding team. I was asked why wasn't I that person if I could build a website? I should be building the app. Fair point. 

So I started looking to see how I could step up to that challenge and hit our next milestone of building an mvp in-house. Online learning alone wouldn't cut it. When I came across Le Wagon, it was a no brainer. I went to a couple of meetup groups first to see how they work and it was impressive. The genuine passion and enthusiasm the teaching staff have for coding and programming is infectious. I signed up for the 9 weeks and it was without doubt the best decision to push our bootstrapped startup forward. In fact it's like adding rocket fuel to your idea.

I won't say it's easy. At the beginning the challenges are tough. It's called a bootcamp for a reason. But as a class you grow. With guidance and mentorship from the teaching staff you help each other, you learn from each other. Being part of such a widely diverse group of international students of all age ranges, cultures and working backgrounds was really inspiring. Standing up on stage to demo our newly built mvp is the best buzz. To be able to achieve that in just 9 weeks is a credit the high calibre of the teaching staff. 

So what have I come away with? I now feel confident to discuss the continuing development of our mvp with other developers and I can work in a team. I have access to a huge bank of video lectures I can refer back to. Gone are the days of scratching my head in silence, I know have a community I can ask for help. In fact, I have some fellow alumni from the batch working with me on our project after the course. When we are ready to hire, Le Wagon will be my first stop. And I can now put 'Technical Lead' with pride on my team slide.

I will continue to work on the mvp in-house to take us to public launch, become investment ready and prepare for our first technical hire. The mvp was presented at a trade show just two weeks after demo day and already has traction. I was also invited to speak on Sky News to share my positive experience of breaking into the London Tech scene as a woman. Best of all, just one month later, we are finalists in the Appsters Award for 2016 in two categories. That, is the true power of Le Wagon.

From entrepreneur..
I have always felt like an entrepreneur. That's why I joined one of the best business school in Europe. At the end of my studies, I tried to launch my first start-up but quickly failed, partly because of a lack of technical skills. In order to be autonomous for my future projects, I knew I needed to learn to code. So, I decided to join Le Wagon.

To fullstack developer and digital nomad
In 2 months, supported by a wonderful team, I acquired enough skills to build all my projects, and, as important for me, I made a lot of creative and talented friends! I still have a lot to learn (you never stop learning as a developer) but I am now confident enough to do it by myself. I enjoyed coding so much that I decided to become a fullstack freelance developer for at least few years while building some of my own side projects. At the same time, as I can work from wherever I want, I will travel a lot. I am flying to Thailand next month 
For me, Le Wagon was the experience of a lifetime and I strongly recommend you to join! Have a look to superfestival.fr to see what you can build after 2 months 

Having just completed 9 weeks at Le Wagon I would like to describe my experience before and after Le Wagon.
 
I started coding at six years old on an Atari 1200 and hobby coded ever since.  Since leaving school I completed my mechanical and electrical degree training with Volvo UK. When I finished that course I moved onto pilot training.  I completed it in 2008 including flight instructor training of which I am one of the very few qualified aerobatic instructors in the UK.  I work various jobs in aviation for 14 years including test flying, airline and air ambulance flights.  Life in flying is amazing but I really wanted to do something more secure without the added uncertainty.  Given I loved coding and had programmed some visual basic programs for aerospace companies, as well as flying, I decided tech was the way forward.  I am a person that tends to plan everything methodically so I started to investigate my options in London. Having been a flight instructor for the last 14 years it was important for me to find somewhere that had a well defined syllabus, study platform and teaching techniques.  For me Le Wagon had all of this in place as well as a proven track record across the world.
 
During the course I have to say my expectations were more than met.  We pair program from the very start, which is considered very important in the tech industry.  The syllabus was relevant, the platform was very user friendly, the teaching techniques reminded me very much of the teaching in aviation, which has taken over 50 years to perfect,  but also the system of being able to ask for help and receiving assistance very quickly.  This in itself is part of the learning process.  The course is tough going but then it is not called a bootcamp for nothing!  In the last two weeks of the course we worked in teams to design and create an MVP.  In a team of 3 we created a system to help with social housing and it was completed and live by the time of demo day, an amazing feat.
 
Since the course I feel a much more able coder and now have the knowledge and ability to complete my own projects of which I have completed one on my own in 14 days which is also in production.  I have also left with a new sense of confidence which allows me to conduct professional developer telephone interviews. Le Wagon really give you a cutting edge and teaches you to work hard and really want to succeed in whatever you do. 

Fresh out of engineering school, I felt the need to dive into web development before I went to do anything else. After discovering the program through articles on Techcrunch during my studies and amazing reviews on Quora, I decided to apply for their first batch in London. 

The program has really surpassed all my expectations. I entered with very basic web design notions and left with strong knowledge of many technologies and languages (HTML, CSS, JS, Ruby, Rails, SQL, jQuery, Git, Heroku, React). You get to apply what you learn though developing in groups two web services: an AirBnb clone as well as your own project towards the end of the course. 

The best part of Le Wagon is you meet a lot of new people from various background, all being very motivated and envious to dive deep into Web development. But even better than that, you will always be part of Le Wagon's family and network. 

I was part of batch 36 in London and can testify to the technical competency of the teachers as well as the hospitality of the supporting staff. I strongly recommend this program to anyone even slightly interested in web development, after a careers change or at the start of your career.

First of all, for the past few years, I have discovered a real passion for web development. I wanted to start a business in the app industry and I had an idea of web application. So I decided to visit a friend who worked at Le Wagon at this time. I pitched him the global idea of the app. He liked it. So he took his computer and started to program. Just like that. I was impressed.

However, things didn't go as planned because we didn't « speak the same language ». He didn't understand my wishes. For instance, I asked him to change a button's color but for him it was not the main focus. He spoke about API, back-end but I didn't get a word.

After few weeks of disputes, we stopped and I started learning HTML and CSS online during almost 6 months. That was cool but not enough at all. No back-end, no business logic. 

So I finally joined Le Wagon this summer which is a 9-week intensive coding bootcamp. I learned ruby, Ruby On rails, Sinatra and all the essential concepts and tools that a developer needs to know: GitHub, git, SQL, HTML5, CSS3, Heroku and advanced concepts of Javascript and jQuery.

It was hard, very hard. It's a choice you make if you plan to join Le Wagon: during 9 weeks, you think hard but that's the only way to learn "no pain, no gain". And after that, if you are really committed, you become powerful. You can start a business on your own. That's the magic.

Since the end of the bootcamp, I code everyday. It's like a drug, I code some apps where I implement all stuff I learnt (that's huge).

Coding alone in his bedroom is fun for a time. Now, I really want to improve even more my developer's skills so I started applying to some jobs in startups. I have an answer every single day. 

That's the second Le Wagon's magic.

Brice Tessier Huort - Batch 30 - Paris

Higher project => http://www.higher.business/